A Journal of the Central Plains Volume 37, Number 3 | Autumn 2014
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Kansas History A Journal of the Central Plains Volume 37, Number 3 | Autumn 2014 A collaboration of the Kansas Historical Foundation and the Department of History at Kansas State University A Show of Patriotism German American Farmers, Marion County, June 9, 1918. When the United States formally declared war against Onaga. There are enough patriotic citizens of the neighborhood Germany on April 6, 1917, many Americans believed that the to enforce the order and they promise to do it." Wamego mayor war involved both the battlefield in Europe and a fight against Floyd Funnell declared, "We can't hope to change the heart of disloyal German Americans at home. Zealous patriots who the Hun but we can and will change his actions and his words." considered German Americans to be enemy sympathizers, Like-minded Kansans circulated petitions to protest schools that spies, or slackers demanded proof that immigrants were “100 offered German language classes and churches that delivered percent American.” Across the country, but especially in the sermons in German, while less peaceful protestors threatened Midwest, where many German settlers had formed close- accused enemy aliens with mob violence. In 1918 in Marion knit communities, the public pressured schools, colleges, and County, home to a thriving Mennonite community, this group churches to discontinue the use of the German language. Local of German American farmers posed before their tractor and newspapers published the names of "disloyalists" and listed threshing machinery with a large American flag in an attempt their offenses: speaking German, neglecting to donate to the to prove their patriotism with a public display of loyalty. In Red Cross, declining to buy liberty bonds, resisting the draft, the midst of a nationwide backlash against their heritage and or refusing to fly an American flag. KansasA City Star article culture, these farmers might not have been responding to a published on June 9, 1918, warned German Americans in the specific threat, but it may not have been a coincidence that the small Pottawatomie County town of Onaga that "word has gone nearby Mennonite-affiliated Tabor College was burned to the out the German language is not to be spoken on the streets of ground in April 1918. Kansas History A Journal of the Central Plains Volume 37, Number 3 | Autumn 2014 Suzanne E. Orr Language and Loyalty: 130 Interim Managing Editor The First World War and German Instruction at Two Kansas Schools Virgil W. Dean Consulting Editor by Justine Greve Derek S. Hoff Book Review Editor Microcosm of Manhood: 148 Katherine Goerl p. 130 Abilene, Eisenhower, and Daniel T. Gresham Editorial Assistants Nineteenth-Century Male Identity by Peter M. Nadeau Editorial Advisory Board Thomas Fox Averill Donald L. Fixico The Early Life and 164 Kenneth M. Hamilton David A. Haury Career of Topeka’s M.H. Hoeflich Thomas D. Isern p. 148 Mike Torrez, 1946–1978: James N. Leiker Bonnie Lynn-Sherow Sport as Means for Studying Latino/a Patricia A. Michaelis Jay M. Price Life in Kansas Pamela Riney-Kehrberg by Jorge Iber Kim Carey Warren Cover: “Mike Torrez,” Courtesy of the Oakland Athletics. Back Cover: Under Moonlight in Missouri: 180 "Fire on the Hill," Private John Benton Hart’s Account Watercolor by Samuel J. p. 164 Reader. of Price’s Raid, October 1864 edited by John Hart Copyright ©2014 Reviews 200 Kansas State Historical Society, Inc. ISSN 0149-9114 Printed by Allen Press, Book Notes 207 Lawrence, Kansas. p. 180 Courtesy of Baker University and Kansas United Methodist Archives, Baldwin City, Kansas. Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 37 (Autumn 2014): 130–147 130 Kansas History Language and Loyalty: The First World War and German Instruction at Two Kansas Schools by Justine Greve wave of patriotism broke across the country when the United States entered the First World War in April 1917. In addition to joining the Red Cross, buying liberty bonds, or planting victory gardens, some citizens asserted their patriotism by burning German books, removing German composers from symphony programs, and re-naming Rubella “liberty measles.”1 The anti-German sentiment also had a more violent side. Those deemed “too German” faced ridicule, threats, accusations of disloyalty or espionage, and sometimes physical harm. In Aresponse to such attitudes many German immigrants made efforts to Americanize. Many stopped speaking German both in public and at home. Teaching or learning German as a second language could also raise suspicions, and this wartime anti-Germanism had a devastating effect on German language and literature departments in American colleges and universities. Scholars such as Frederick Luebke, LaVern Rippley, Don Tolzman, and Carl Wittke have detailed the harsh treatment of German Americans during World War I without much attention to the way university foreign language programs handled the new Germanophobia.2 Post-secondary institutions were not as likely to ban the “Hun language” as el- ementary or high schools, but academia was nonetheless affected by the popular association of German speaking with national disloyalty. Schools that saw a decline in German enrollment were public as well as private, religious as well as Justine Greve graduated from Baker University with a bachelor’s degree in history, German, and English. In 2013 she completed her master’s degree in American studies at the University of Kansas. Her overarching research interests include American history and religion in the early twentieth century. The author wishes to thank John Richards and the anonymous readers at Kansas History for their thoughtful comments on previous drafts of this article. 1. Terrence G. Wiley, “The Imposition of World War I Era English-Only Policies and the Fate of German in North America,” in Language and Politics in the United States and Canada: Myths and Realities, ed. Thomas Ricento and Barbara Burnaby (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998), 223, 231; Barbara Tischler, “One Hundred Percent Americanism and Music in Boston during World War I,” American Music 4 (Summer 1986): 164; LaVern J. Rippley, The German-Americans (1976; reprint, Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984), 186. 2. Frederick Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty: German Americans and World War I (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974); LaVern J. Rippley, The German-Americans (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976); Don H. Tolzmann, German Americans in the World Wars (München: K.G. Saur, 1995); and Carl Wittke, The German-Language Press in America (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1957). Language and Loyalty 131 secular, “100 percent American” as well as German. Though the phe- nomenon as a whole can be super- ficially explained as “patriotism,” this tells us little about the specific reasons schools shied away from the language. A closer look at the elimi- nation of German in two Kansas in- stitutions indicates that the motives varied with individual schools’ circumstances. In many cases—at least, on the surface—rejecting Ger- man classes, clubs, and culture was a voluntary statement of national al- legiance, either on the part of the ad- ministration or the student body. At Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas, prowar enthusiasm was coupled with an anti-German sen- timent, likely fueled by the highly respected and Germanophobic Wil- liam Alfred Quayle, a Methodist bishop and former president of the university. As a result, students at Baker abandoned German as a field of study. At Bethel College in North Newton, the “patriotic” elimination of the German language was driven in part by fear and the school’s per- ceived need to prove its national loyalty. Experience with anti-Ger- manism and anti-pacifism caused the Mennonite-affiliated institution to drop German, hoping to estab- lish a patriotic image for its students and staff—members of a group that This lithograph, printed in the New York Herald on April 12, 1917, shows a searchlight otherwise appeared subversive. scanning a marching crowd of German Americans, depicted stereotypically as portly men with handlebar mustaches and long pipes. The U.S. government classified hundreds of thousands of German American men as “enemy aliens” during World War I, leaving them vulnerable to aker and Bethel represent searches, property seizure, and even internment. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and two models of the “patri- Photographs Division, Washington, D.C otic” rejection of German: one apparently lighthearted and the other involuntary. Yet as with most binary catego- only to recognize oppression and privilege, but also to re- Bries, the distinction is not actually so clear-cut. Any resident think the motives of the patriots who seem to have given up of the U.S. is under the gaze of Uncle Sam and, in a national German so easily and pressured their neighbors to do the crisis situation, likely aware of his or her own performance same. With their own claim to American authenticity on the of patriotism. Though certain behaviors are more danger- line, xenophobia may have felt for some like the best—even ous and certain people more closely watched than others, a necessary—option. all people must police themselves. Thus it is necessary not 132 Kansas History he First World War was not the first time in many students refused to enroll in German classes. In American history that German speakers had 1915 about a quarter of high school students studied Ger- been ill-treated. In the mid-1800s, religious dif- man; by 1922 that number was at less than 1 percent. The ferences and a rise in nativism created tension Newton Weekly Kansan-Republican reported in 1918 that in between (often Catholic) Germans and the English-speak- Kansas, “all high schools and academies have eliminated Ting Protestant majority. Nativists’ primary concern was the language, and practically all elementary schools have that teaching immigrant school children in their native done likewise.” Such an inclusive report seems extreme language hindered the process of assimilation.